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Help me die, it had begged her. But she can’t kill it.

Not even in her night-hat. Not even with the inspiration burning in her mind from Dreams.

The mites she sends to devour it are integrated instead into its form.

The blades she uses to skewer it have no effect.

She is a girl who is quite good at origami. I would say that the proviso “for a human” no longer applies. She is now quite good at origami, abstractly. I think if she’d ever met Death, Cheryl would have folded him; and if she’d folded against the Devil, well, I wouldn’t have wanted to bet on either one.

She can take the air and she can fold it into a flower. She can fold a paper army into life.

But she can’t kill the paper serpent.

It’s got too much of Hans’ work in it. To make his twist endure — to ensure that the serpent never got out from under him — he’d had to use an immortal and unlimited trick. The mechanism of its torment sustains it: it cannot die for to die is to escape Hans’ prison.

She tries to kill it. She can’t kill it.

It is too well-woven. Too cleverly twisted. Too vast.

<< – 2 –

Chapter 6: Cheryl >>